The "ground-zero mosque"

Radicals and demagogues

TODAY the proposed Cordoba House, or "mosque at ground zero" (never mind that it is two blocks away—see photo), cleared a final hurdle in its effort to set up shop in lower Manhattan. By now, most everyone has stated an opinion on the issue, but there are two good op-eds on the topic in today's Wall Street Journal, one by Dan Senor, the other by William McGurn. Both acknowledge the rights of the proposed Islamic centre, and applaud its good intentions, but they also ask its leaders to consider moving it, so as to avoid confrontation. They are scrupulously polite articles, but they cede to demagoguery even as they avoid it in their own writing.

Mr Senor's argument breaks down here:

[T]he fact remains that in the minds of many who are swayed by the most radical interpretations of Islam, the Cordoba House will not be seen as a center for peace and reconciliation. It will rather be celebrated as a Muslim monument erected on the site of a great Muslim "military" victory—a milestone on the path to the further spread of Islam throughout the world.

This seems to me like a classic case of projection. The views Mr Senor ascribes to radical Islamists are quite similar to the views of Newt Gingrich, who thinks the centre is "all about conquest and thus an assertion of Islamist triumphalism which we should not tolerate." Many other Americans hold equally Islamophobic opinions of the centre. Rick Lazio, a Republican running for governor in New York, sees the project as a possible threat. Oddly, the radical Islamists referenced by Mr Senor might agree, but for very different reasons. Jeffrey Goldberg explains:

This seems like such an obvious point, but it is apparently not obvious to the many people who oppose the Cordoba Initiative's planned mosque in lower Manhattan, so let me state it as clearly as possible: The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative's proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama's most dire enemies are Muslims. This is quantitatively true, of course—al Qaeda and its ideological affiliates have murdered thousands of Muslims—but it is ideologically true as well: al Qaeda's goal is the purification of Islam (that is to say, its extreme understanding of Islam) and apostates pose more of a threat to Bin Laden's understanding of Islam than do infidels.

I know Feisal Abdul Rauf; I've spoken with him at a public discussion at the 96th street mosque in New York about interfaith cooperation. He represents what Bin Laden fears most: a Muslim who believes that it is possible to remain true to the values of Islam and, at the same time, to be a loyal citizen of a Western, non-Muslim country.

Mr Senor and Mr McGurn may be right that Cordoba House's goal of cross-cultural understanding is not best served by building this centre on this location at this time. But if that's the case, it is not due to the views of radical Islamists abroad, but rather to the radical rhetoric of our demagogic politicians and pundits. Any effort at cross-cultural understanding probably needs to start with an admission that much of America just isn't ready. And any op-ed on the topic should include the requisite amount of shame.

The issue, as always, is a political one. Those who support the building of the victory mosque so close to the scene of the greatest mass murder in American history, perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists and funded or supported by the enemies of our country, are making a profound political statement. Comrade Barack Hussein Obama should take a step back and consider what the implications would be if the US were to do something analogous in the Middle East, such as build a Christian church on a bombing site in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many Americans of my generation are no less outraged by this planned victory mosque than if the government allowed a Shinto shrine to be built on the gates of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Politicians who ignore these sentiments are not politically tone-deaf; they are politically stupid. We will give them a hard lesson to learn in November.

Okay, I'm gonna say something a little anti-CW here, so bear with me: 9/11 was not that big a deal, objectively speaking. There, I said it.

Per se, it was a few dozen nutjobs--aided by a few hundred nutjob Svengalis, gaining moral support from maybe a few hundred thousand jihadist "Muslims" and a couple of opportunistic governments (Iran and, at the time, Iraq)--who accomplished, relative to resources, remarkable and reprehensible feats of destruction.

3,000-odd people died who shouldn't have, and a lot of property was wrecked. This, though terrible, amounts to a few holiday weekends' worth of traffic casualties, plus maybe a small hurricane for the property damage. There is no "ground-zero" from 9/11 because there was no atomic blast on 9/11. It would take a hundred 9/11s even to approach the destruction witnessed at the two actual ground-zeros, and thousands more to equal a siege of Leningrad, battle of Stalingrad, battle of Nanjing, battle of Iwo Jima, Bataan march, Tet offensive, etc. etc.

As terrible as 9/11 was, it was merely the most dramatic single event in the immediate collective memory. It is far from the worst thing to happen in the past few generations. It was a mass murder--an especially efficient and high-visual-impact crime spree. It was not a geopolitical crisis until we Americans made it one, and it certainly did not, in and of itself, spark a clash of civilizations. And for that a majority of Americans seem willing to cashier the First Amendment that many, many more than 3,000 Americans perished to establish and protect.

Perhaps a little perspective is in order before we decide that an entire religion should be stigmatized by the nasty (but on a global or even national scale, insignificant) behavior of a vanishingly small number of psychopaths using said religion as cover for their murderous tendencies.

I'm so sick of hearing about "interfaith cooperation". Who cares whether boosters of mutually-incompatible fairy tales can find common ground? Why do politicians insist on giving these groups space to find out?

The real question is whether religion is compatible with the kind of open society necessary for a functioning democracy. Neither fundamentalist Islam nor fundamentalist Christianity show much sign of it -- and the more moderate versions just give them cover.

Good choice of picture (from 2001) for the post, btw. As a mere 9/11 witness from several blocks away, the image evokes visceral memories in my mind. So perhaps in the distant future the site will be fair game for any number of uses. But today, the living survivors, witnesses, and families of the victims deserve a better memorial than a mosque.

@gtgator
I might take one of your examples seriously if this Imam was planning to build a shrine to Osama Bin Laden, or perhaps a memorial to suicide bombers. But, in fact, this Imam and this organization have no more to do with anything that happened on 9/11 than the local McDonald's in Hiroshima had to do with WWII.

I don't think they should be stopped from building the Mosque. Nonetheless, why there? I am sure their intentions are good, but like the WSJ article's example of Christian nuns, perhaps they don't understand the signficance of that area. To also further repeat that article Pope John Paul asked those nuns to relocate to another nearby location as a sign of good faith. Confusion reigns on both sides, but I think the builders in this case misjudged people's feelings too. It really shouldn't be a shock either:

*Suppose America wanted to build a Veterans Memorial in Hiroshima. *Suppose Christians wanted to build a church in the most scared portion of Mecca.
*Suppose Japan wanted to build their Veterans Memorial in certain areas of Hawaii.
* Native American's must roll their eyes at momuments like the St.Louis arch and statues of Andrew Jackson.
* I bet Iraq is just begging to have a statue built of G.W. Bush.

Again, I think they have the legal right to build there, but at least a portion of their attitude was ignorant towards the feelings of a lot of people, even if their intentions are good.

The writer mentions American just isn't ready. While true, I will further this to bet that every nation harbors similiar feeling towards a given group/cause. Hopefully one day relations will improve enough that there won't be any controversy, but it isn't just a ignorant American thing. Its everywhere.

All of your examples are of an outside power erecting a monument/building of it's own within another country.

This mosque is being built by American citizens within their own country. I understand that to some, any other adjectives used to describe an American other than white or Christian casts their patriotism in a dubious light; but they are well within their rights to build this mosque.

The only reason for someone to get offended is because they consider *all* Muslims to be responsible for 9/11, no matter how unrelated they might be to the actual hijackers. While I can sympathize with how people might feel this way, it doesn't change the fact that such feelings are a form of bigotry, and therefore such feelings deserve *no* respect from the rest of us except insofar as how we might be able to help the people experiencing them to them heal so that they can get over it.

Having said all this, if you are someone who is upset by the presence of this mosque, then I would recommend protesting it in a manner that is healthy and in the best of American traditions: by drawing pictures of Mohammad everywhere around it.

"But today, the living survivors, witnesses, and families of the victims deserve a better memorial than a mosque."

That is, without a doubt, one of the stupidest things I've ever read. I can tell it author was aiming for poignant, but it's really just dumb.

The living survivors, witnesses, and families of victims of 9/11 are getting a huge memorial - the Freedom Tower. The mosque is going to be small, and several blocks away - only a few hundred feet closer to the mosque that's ALREADY nearby.

It's like labeling a Toyota dealership or Karate Dojo in Hawaii a "memorial that dishonors World War II vets and their families."

This "debate" reminds me of how Oklahoma recently passed a law banning the use of Sharia law in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma ranks among the bottom ten states in the U.S. in most measures of education and health outcomes. But the state legislature tackled the most ready nemesis, the 0.5% of Oklahomans who have overrun county governments and instituted mandatory beards for men and hijabs for women.

If you're worried about the survivors and victims of 9/11, you should be advocating for better health benefits for the first responders who are living victims of Al-Qaeda (suffering breathing ailments from airborne toxins after the attacks), instead of harassing a group of Americans who had nothing to do with 9/11.

Here's food for thought: There were no members of the mosque that's already near Ground Zero (called Manhattan Masjid) implicated in the 9/11 attacks. So that means the only connection between that mosque and 9/11 is that the American Muslims who died in the attacks probably worshiped there. Think about that the next time you imply that Islam = Al-Qaeda.

"Any effort at cross-cultural understanding probably needs to start with an admission that much of America just isn't ready. And any op-ed on the topic should include the requisite amount of shame."

Oh please, enough with America isn't ready or isn't able. We are quite capable of compassion and implementing principle, so enough with that.

There are radical Islamists out there; it's not just in people's minds. That's what makes these things so tricky. Maybe you should focus your ire outwards towards them, rather than what you think of as the shameful Americans.

Yeah, shame on you America! Your guilt is inadequate. Why is this such a big deal, anyways? It was only a couple of skyscrapers!? It's not like anything really serious happened like people getting their feelings hurt with mean, ugly words.

I agree entirely that feelings are frequently irrational and often outside our control, so there is no shame in feeling the "wrong" thing; for example, there is no shame in feeling a desire to kill the person who murdered your brother, even though you know that the "right" attitude you should be taking is one of compassion and forgiveness. However, it is shameful to allow this emotion to drive you to dedicate your life towards killing this person yourself in revenge.

Similarly, it is not the feeling of uneasiness towards building a mosque so close to Ground Zero that I find shameful, but rather the fact that people are publicly calling for others to change their behavior based on these feelings of uneasiness.

I am sure they don't have anything to do with Osama Bin Laden, but that wasn't my point. Its simply that Muslims are building a Muslim building in an area that nearly 2000 people were killed by Muslims (albeit more extreme and probably of different sects). It does not take a leap of faith to see that someone is going to be offended, even if you aren't related to the offending group and your intentions are pure. Thus, I think they greatly underestimated people's feelings. The question that must ask themselves, if it is worth hurting some feelings in the hopes of building a better relationship.

Regarding the point about "Islamic triumphalism" by radical anti-western Muslims- why should we ever worry what makes our enemies happy? I doubt Bin Laden spends a lot of his day wondering what makes me happy.

The last time I checked there wasn't a noticeable Muslim community in downtown Manhattan. Who is this mosque for? Nobody is objecting the mosque on E 96th St, a couple of blocks away from 92nd St Y, and those are the best example of "interfaith tolerance", whatever that may mean. The new mosque in the area where there is a mosque already, where $$$ is the only god, and which a block away from the site of atrocities commited by Islamic fanatics seems a bit provocative no matter how you slice it. Getting all worked up about opposing the construction of this mosque is rather disingenuous in the light of muslim community reaction to Danish cartoons, Rushdie's poems or Sharon's visit to Al-Aqsa.

Didn't actually mean to suggest that 9/11 was not a big deal, only that it was not as big a deal as it's usually portrayed. Anything that wipes out so much as a household at a blow is a big deal, but there's a wide gulf between an 9/11-sized big deal and a Hiroshima-sized big deal.

Any of the events I cited were death and destruction on an industrial scale--anything, no matter its nature, that systematically kills hundreds of thousands of people is intrinsically, unavoidably awful. 3,000 is awful but survivably so--our society was neither significantly damaged nor existentially threatened by 9/11 or its perpetrators.

Nothing inherent in the event itself required major social adjustments; the actual means of the attack were neutralized by the attack itself (nobody can hijack a plane anymore--try it, I dare ya), and better intelligence and visa control handle the rest. I'd not be surprised if the first 10% of counterterrorism spending eliminated 99.9% of the actual terrorist threat--the other 90% trying to eliminate noise around the margins.

My point is, that even if the current crop of terrorists were 100% successful in every attempt--managed a dozen 9/11s--as terrible as it would be, it would only disrupt or disable the U.S. to the extent that we get our undies in a bunch about it. We are the superpower, they are a bunch of yingyangs with boxcutters and sacks of fertilizer. Terrorists can barely inflict more than a bee sting by direct assault, and they know it. We play right into their game by elevating their vicious, misanthropic crap into a struggle for survival in which they are not only soldiers in a war (rather than murdering thugs) but an threat to the very existence of the United States. And we only give them more "soldiers" when the Palins and Gingriches of American go on about how all Muslims are, deep down, our enemies--instead of fighting dozens of crooks, these dopes would have us fight billions of innocents.